Humanoid Robots Share Their First Kiss

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Humanoid Robots Share Their First Kiss

Say hello to Thomas and Janet, two humanoid machines who claim to be the first robotic pair to share a kiss.

The kiss between the robots was unveiled in December during a performance of scenes from the Phantom of the Opera at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, says IEEE Spectrum.

Since then the robots have been working on their technique. Chyi-Yeu Lin, a mechanical engineering professor at the Taiwanese University says a kiss requires some sophisticated hand-eye co-ordination among the robots and self-balancing mechanisms.

The kissing robots are similar to other efforts to help robots express emotions in ways that are familiar to humans. For instance, researchers recently created an incredibly realistic Einstein robot that can smile and frown. Earlier, researchers used to have program each of the robot's 31 artificial muscles individually but eventually trained the robot to use machine learning techniques to learn select emotions on its own.

Thomas and Janet have six expressions that are created using servos pulling at several points in the face and mouth. Eventually, they hope to be part of a group of autonomous performing robot actors.